Comparison of Microsoft Power BI service plans

Introduction

Power BI is a cloud-based suite of business analytics tools that lets anyone connect to, visualize, and analyze data with greater speed, efficiency, and understanding. It connects users to a broad range of live data through easy-to-use dashboards, provides AI-infused automated insights, embedded and interactive reports, and delivers compelling visualizations that bring data big and small to life. This article provides a comparison of Microsoft Power BI service plans.

Power BI comprises three components:

  • A Windows desktop application called Power BI Desktop.
  • An online SaaS (Software as a Service) service called the Power BI service.
  • Power BI mobile apps for Windows, iOS, and Android devices.

Comparison of Microsoft Power BI service plans

The available retail pricing plans are described in the following article: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/. The following plans are available for purchase via the CSP channe, available either in monthly or annual subscriptions:

  • Power BI Pro
  • Power BI Premium Per User
  • Power BI Pro for faculty
  • Power BI Pro (Nonprofit Staff Pricing)

The following table by Microsoft provides a feature comparison of each Microsoft Power BI plan.

FeaturePower BI ProPower BI Premium per userPower BI Premium per capacity
Collaboration and Analytics
Mobile app accessYesYesYes
Publish reports to share and collaborateYesYesNo
Paginated (RDL) reportsNoYesYes
Consume content without a per-user licenseNoNoYes
On-premises reporting with Power BI Report ServerNoNoYes
Data prep, modeling, and visualization
Model size limit1 GB100 GB400 GB
Refresh rate8/day48/day48/day
Connect to 100+ data sourcesYesYesYes
Create reports and visualizations with Power BI DesktopYesYesYes
Embedding APIs and controlsYes*Yes*Yes*
AI visualsYesYesYes
Advanced AI (text analytics, image detection, automated machine learning)NoYesYes
XMLA endpoint read/write connectivityNoYesYes
Dataflows (direct query, linked and computed entities, enhanced compute engine)NoYesYes
Analyze data stored in Azure Data Lake StorageNoYesYes
Governance and administration
Data security and encryptionYesYesYes
Metrics for content creation, consumption, and publishingYesYesYes
Deployment pipelines for application lifecycle managementNoYesYes
Multi-geo deployment managementNoNoYes
Bring your own key (BYOK)NoNoYes
Autoscale add-on availability (preview)NoNoYes
Max storage10 GB/user100 TB100 TB

More details on Power BI pricing and licensing can be found at: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/service-features-license-type.

Sources

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/fundamentals/power-bi-overview

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/power-bi-service-description